Andrew Jordan – "A bad day at the office"

Practice was very good, I managed to set the fourth fastest time in FP1 on some really old tyres. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that your position in practice doesn’t matter and it’s all about the feel of the car, and I was very comfortable in that first session. I could tell the car had a lot of potential for the weekend.

Unfortunately going into qualifying it all went downhill. As soon as I pulled out of the pits I could tell there was an issue. A power steering pump failed on pit exit and, while it would have been possible to drive a lap, I’d have been five seconds off the pace so it wasn’t worth wasting a set of tyres.

Our guys at Motorbase worked brilliantly to try and get the Ford Focus ST fixed before the end of the session, but we were just short on time so I had to settle for 31^st on the grid, with no time set. That session screwed the entire weekend – it was going to be a serious uphill struggle from then on.

Starting at the back of the grid and on soft tyres, I knew I had to work really hard to get back up the order, but I was confident I could make it through the pack and get some points on the board.

I made a cracking start, gaining about ten places in the first few corners before I found myself spinning across the grass on the infield, undoing all I’d done off the line. Coming back from 31^st for the second time in one lap I got my head down and started working my way back through the field.

To come away from race one with two points was a good result in the end, but it did leave me wondering what could have been had I not been turned around on that opening lap.

As I started race two from 14th I was confident I could move even further up the field – especially now that I’d got rid of the 48kg of ballast from race one! Unfortunately I was subject to some very robust moves from those lower down the order which left me with some damage and was unable to move up the order like I’d planned.

Race three was better for us. After the restart from the start line incident, which happened behind me, I was back up the front end, finishing fifth, and racing with the people I prefer to be racing with. I loved it. They have class, they give enough room, they don’t slam into the back of other drivers.

It was a crazy weekend, and I don’t want to slag anyone off, but at times things got out of hand this weekend. Touring cars is about hard racing, and if you clamp down on that then you'll lose the spectacle that attracts so many fans – but some of the racing this weekend was like amateur hour. We were lucky no-one got hurt.

As a whole the weekend was a missed opportunity – the car felt great but I was stuck in traffic too much to unleash its full potential. I’ve dropped down to eighth in the standings now, this season is so up and down for everyone and that wasn’t the weekend we needed. Hopefully we can change our fortunes at Knockhill in two weeks time…

Images courtesy of the BTCC